


Origin Stories

by Querulousgawks



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Meet-Cute, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 19:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11020053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: Lardo met her art friends in the first semester of freshman year. None of them ever really believed that she was angsty.





	Origin Stories

Most students’ easels need to be adjusted on the first day of Introduction to Drawing, but only two get called up to the front of the class: the one that's a foot too tall, and the one that's at least a foot too short. 

Frank the TA cracks jokes and spins the dials, suggesting they go around the room and give name, hometown and hobby, since “these two are gonna take a while.” The class mumbles introductions and struggles through their own adjustments; shifting her weight, Larissa concentrates on a blank expression and the sense that Shane, next to her, is trying to compress her spine. It makes her brave enough to start the conversation, once they're set free to find a couple of open stools in the back of the room. 

"Let's never do that again," she offers, hooking her legs around the rungs and trying to shake the tension out of her back. Shane laughs.

"What," she asks softly, "stand around in front of 48 strangers? I love that."

"Be an example on perspective on the first day? That's always great."

“Inhale that close to TA Frank?" 

Larissa laughs so abruptly she snorts _and_ chokes. Heads turn all around them, and yep, she's going to die of shame in her first college class. "The patchouli's a killer," she agrees, trying to sound blasé.

Shane just pats her on the back, a little smug. On her other side, Tanya-from-Albequerque, who Lardo thinks resentfully didn’t have to adjust her easel at all, is grinning openly at them, merciless. _Art students,_ Larissa thinks. 

***

The windows in the south dorms are built to swivel outwards, enough to catch a breeze if you prop the door open right and coordinate with the room across the hall. They do not open wide enough for a person to climb in. They also probably aren’t built to take much weight.

“Larrrr,” Tanya whispers, clinging to the sash. Her sneakers dig into the brick sill as the window creaks ominously. Larissa squints past her to where Shane stands, the security light picking up glints of her eyebrow piercing. She spreads her hands, helpless, and mouths _breakup._

“Ya gotta tell me why she left, Lar,” Tanya says piteously. “You know this shit. You can - whoops!” She loses her footing and her grip at the same time and tumbles into the holly bushes two feet below the window. “You can explain it _all,_ ” she announces to the sky.

It’s midnight. They have crit tomorrow, and Larissa has a dawn shift at the dining hall job she dreams about quitting. But Tanya had massaged her hands on demand the whole last week of bookmaking, and Shane had Sharpied “paint water” and “not paint water” on her mugs after a terrible mistake. They had stared blankly at spreadsheets together in the stats class they’d walked into by mistake and stayed in entirely out of aesthetic appreciation for Justin Oluransi and Camilla Collins. 

“Come around the front,” she tells them. “I just got a care package, anyway.”

“Art students,” Shane says regretfully, and Larissa laughs. 

“We shoulda been jocks,” she agrees, and closes the window on the sound of Tanya’s indignant reply.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the amazing Women of Check, Please! Zine which can be found here: https://omgcpwomen.tumblr.com/post/161138167722/click-here-to-download-the-women-of-check-please
> 
> and beta-ed on absurdly short notice by the forgiving @yoursummerfrost. Check out their story in the zine!


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